


Every Cloud

by ohclare



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohclare/pseuds/ohclare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>every cloud has a silver lining, if you can take advantage of it</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Cloud

_Every cloud has a silver lining._

A tiny brown haired little boy stirred fitfully in his cot, his usual tan skin pallid and he was covered in sweat. Every so often his body would shake as if he was having some sort of fit, only to end in a bout of furious bout of coughing. Alone in a sterile room and he didn’t even realize it.

In a small room next door a slight frantic looking woman was desperately staring through the window at him. Penny looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, her usual curly brown hair transformed into a bird’s nest and her fingernails bitten to stumps. Occasionally she turned away to snap at whoever was closest to her, to demand information but she never got a reply. Every healer there wanted to tell her something to reassure her but there was nothing to tell her, not when they knew nothing themselves.

She never really moved, her rich hazel eyes focused on the tiny child in front of her. She was desperate and yet nothing made a difference. She couldn’t will her son back to health no matter how desperately she wished it.

And at night when she was forced to leave him she had to return to an empty home that possessed only memories. Memories of happy days that were long gone and that would never come back, days when all she had to worry about was whether she was going to get a promotion.

Of course Oliver came in the end, he got to the hospital despite all of her efforts to the contrary. He’d been in Australia when his mother-in-law’s owl had arrived, Puddlemere’s glorious winning streak broken at a second’s notice when their star keeper disappeared back to Britain.

Penny tried to stop him from coming in, in her eyes Oliver had abandoned them and abandoned all claim to him son when he had walked out that door. She knew that she couldn’t really though, not when everyone else was on his side.

That didn’t mean that they talked though, they both waited in the same room but they never looked at each other. They pretended that the other wasn’t there. The memories of their separation were too recent, too big to confront right now. They couldn’t talk about it when someone so much more important than either of them was dying in front of their eyes.

Sometimes Oliver would go to speak, he’d look up at Penny and open his mouth but there were no words to say. Penny never would though; she was too stubborn to do that. One had no words and the other refused to use them.

Once upon a time they had been in love, they’d been happy together in the years after the war despite what everyone said. It hadn’t been a calm marriage but neither of them wanted that, they both wanted a bit of fire and passion in their relationship. Penny had taken Oliver out of his constant Quidditch obsession, she had opened his eyes to a world he’d barely noticed existed and mostly he’d loved her for that. And Oliver had helped Penny to feel safe and secure when her whole world had been shaken, he made her a better person in a way that she never noticed. They were happy together.

Harry had been the confirmation of their love, the one thing they’d been so proud of and yet with his birth everything started to go wrong. Suddenly they started to have real arguments, arguments over things that actually mattered. Oliver was never home to tuck him into bed, Penny spent the evenings working, they had to have a nanny, they never had sex anymore, they never saw their friends and they couldn’t agree on how to raise their son. They couldn’t figure out how to make it all better again, two years of near constant arguing. When the tour came up Oliver agreed to go without a second’s thought, when he told Penny she told him not to come back.

But he was back and he would have always come back even if their son wasn’t so desperately ill. It was being away that had made everything so clear, he loved Penny and if they both just compromised then it’d all be okay.

Neither of them knew how to compromise but maybe it was time to learn. Maybe if it wasn't too late.


End file.
